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Author: MikeSmithson

And the winner of the PB Rochester and Strood competition is…..

And the winner of the PB Rochester and Strood competition is…..

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N.Simms with the winning entry “UKIP by 7.26%” This was 0.02% short of the actual margin of 7.28% and the winner got closest. Congratulations. The winner will receive a copy of the new book edited by Philip Cowley and Rob Ford “Sex Lies & The Ballot Box” which was launched earlier this month and has attracted a fair bit of publicity. Congratulations. Thanks to Mark Hopkins of www.nojam.com for creating the structure for this competition. It has worked well and…

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Scoping the scale and geography of Labour’s Scottish collapse – hopefully we’ll get some constituency polling this week

Scoping the scale and geography of Labour’s Scottish collapse – hopefully we’ll get some constituency polling this week

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One of the big unknowns about GE2015 is how Labour is going to fare in Scotland where at GE2010 it retained 41 of the 59 Westminster seats. Clearly anything that could erode that total could have massive impact on the overall outcome. There have only been three Scotland only polls in the past eight weeks all of them suggesting that EdM’s party is in serious trouble and could possibly lose a lot of seats while it is making inroads in…

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Labour’s Scottish crisis is masking what could be even more significant – the Tory collapse in England

Labour’s Scottish crisis is masking what could be even more significant – the Tory collapse in England

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By my reckoning this is an 8.5% CON-LAB swing A great feature of the weekly Ashcroft National Poll is that it shows a separate voting split for England where 533 of the 650 constituencies are including the vast bulk of the marginals. This was “won” by Cameron’s Conservatives overwhelmingly in 2010 making net gains of more than 90 and forming the bedrock of their overall positive outcome. The party secured 39.2% of the English vote against Labour’s 28.1. The poll…

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The Ashcroft phone poll, like Populus this morning, has CON trailing by 5%

The Ashcroft phone poll, like Populus this morning, has CON trailing by 5%

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But these are the most dramatic figures of all In England where 533 of the 650 seats are @LordAshcroft has CON 28 LAB 34 LD 6 UKIP 22 GRN 8 So UKIP just 6% behind CON — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) November 24, 2014 This is starting to get serious for the blue team As usual at 4pm on Monday Lord Ashcroft publishes his latest weekly national phone poll and today’s show the LAB lead moving to 5%. The followed this morning’s Monday Populus online poll that…

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How online polls are producing higher LAB and UKIP shares while phone surveys are best for the LDs and Greens

How online polls are producing higher LAB and UKIP shares while phone surveys are best for the LDs and Greens

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CON is about the same under either approach After my post last night on how there is a big gap between phone and online polling on the CON+LAB aggregates I decided to take this a bit further looking at how each party fared under each approach. The results, based on the last public polls of nine firms, are featured in the chart above. Essentially LAB and UKIP do better with the online polling while the LDs and Greens come out…

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Daily Express reporting new poll with UKIP in second place

Daily Express reporting new poll with UKIP in second place

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Daily Express reporting on its front page that UKIP in SECOND place in new poll. No details of the pollster. pic.twitter.com/rOQHv6Goeq — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) November 23, 2014 No other details known at the moment UPDATE Could the ExprEss poll be this Sun readers' survey which IS NOT A PROPER POLL. Known in business as a "voodoo poll" pic.twitter.com/M6DwP7KT7T — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) November 23, 2014 2nd Update 0430 The poll appears to be based on a subset of Sun…

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Here’s a funny thing. Polls that carry out fieldwork online are 3-9 points more favourable to the “big 2” than phone surveys

Here’s a funny thing. Polls that carry out fieldwork online are 3-9 points more favourable to the “big 2” than phone surveys

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The big methodology difference is in sampling. The phone firms used randomised dialling and theoretically anybody with a landline, and now mobile, can be included. Online polls are generally carried out amongst members of a polling panel who perhaps are slightly different from the electorate as a whole in they’ve signed up in the first place and are doing the survey for money. It was only when I was looking through recent findings from the different firms that I found…

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The NT should repeat “This House” – a taste of what happens when you have a minority government

The NT should repeat “This House” – a taste of what happens when you have a minority government

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This should be screened again before May 7th Suddenly people are talking about a possible minority government after the general election because of the way the maths appear at the moment. With the polls looking so tight with UKIP and the SNP expected to have much bigger contingents at Westminster it’s quite likely that neither LAB or CON will secure a majority and a future coalition very difficult to achieve. Last year I wrote enthusiastically about James Graham’s “This House”…

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